


First Night of Forever

by Skyler10



Series: Forever 'verse [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Nightmares, Post-JE, Romance, kid reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4920901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tentoo is amazed and a little shocked by how well his optimistic Rose is taking the events of Bad Wolf Bay II, but when he sees how much she’s been hurting without him the last few years, he understands why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tied Together With a Smile

**Author's Note:**

> My usual shippy cliché trope-filled cheesiness here. A little hurt/comfort. A little nightmare fic. A little telepathy. Mostly dialogue. Lots of kissing and smiling and happy feels. Goes a little deeper as they work out some stuff and talk about the past/future, but basically, pretty much, 90% snogging, flirting, fluff and love. If you are sensitive to sugary romance, check with your doctor before consuming (Obviously, my Doctor is DT so he is ALL for the shippiness). May be hazardous to your angst. Rated T for innuendo, suggestive themes and hints at what might happen if I ever get around to writing a sequel.

“This one’s ours.” Rose finished their tour by leading the new-yet-not-new Doctor into her bedroom at the Tyler mansion and closing the door behind him. Well, that was one question solved. Or two. He not only had a pre-assigned room, but it was exactly the one he wanted.  
  
They had gotten little sleep on the zeppelin ride back from Bad Wolf Bay. Physically and emotionally, they were at their limits. Not that he knew what his limits were quite yet with this new body. Not to mention a new genetic makeup. Rose appeared to understand he was the same man, which is all that really mattered on the zeppelin trip, but now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he realized he had a lot of learning to do about being part-human. Exhaustion seemed to be his first lesson.  
  
She tugged his hand to enter further into the feminine bedroom.  
  
“Mum and I had a deal. I could have my own place however I want it but she got her way here.” She gestured to the flowery duvet. “Exhibit A.”  
  
Her smile at her mother’s expense loosened his apprehension as she continued to explain the backstories behind the Jackie-esque decorations. She was not unaffected by their situation, of course, but was accepting it with exceptional grace and optimism. He had sympathized with her confusion and hurt on the beach, which was certainly understandable given what an arse the other him was being, but this light, sunny Rose was an anachronism from the past in the given circumstances. There had to be something she wasn’t telling him.  
  
His anxiety eased as she wrapped him in a hug on impulse. She held him tightly for a second before pulling away, too fast for his surprised reflexes to reciprocate.  
  
“Sorry, I just…” She turned away, focusing on anything but him. “Anyway, here’s the closet. Obviously. I don’t have much over here ‘cause most of it’s at my flat. Again, obviously. Through the door over there’s loo, and the shower, and…”  
  
Babbling. Just like him. He wondered how many of his habits she had kept up over the years. Goodness knows he had catalogues of hers. Even this body was originally chosen specifically for her. It was frightful how much he loved her. Truly scandalous. He wondered if kissing her again would be too soon.  
  
She noticed his silence and turned back to question him. She noticed his preoccupation with her lips and squeezed his hand. His resolve gave way. The beach felt like an eon ago to him, but what if it was moving too fast for her? Or was it too slow? No time like the present to find out.  
  
He caught her other arm and pulled her close to face him. She opened her lips to say something, but he filled them with his. In a moment he would be eternally grateful for, she melted into him. Just as they were approaching the point of hands wandering, a swift knock and opening door made them jump apart.  
  
“Mum!”  
  
“Just wanted to see what time you two will be up for breakfast in the morning.”  
  
“I don’t know!” Rose answered with a little more force than necessary. “We can take care of ourselves, you know. Make our own decisions.”  
  
Piecing together evidence from the last 24 hours, the Doctor suspected there was more to this mother-daughter exchange that he had missed during his cat naps on the zeppelin.  
  
“Rose,” Jackie sighed. “I’m just trying to be-”  
  
“It’s alright, Jackie,” the Doctor interjected. “Don’t worry about us. I don’t want to be any trouble.”  
  
That last bit got the two women smiling together again despite the tension between them.  
  
“You? Trouble?” Rose teased. “Never.”  
  
“Alright then,” Jackie surrendered. “I’ll leave you to it.” With a suggestive wink at the Doctor, she left the room, making sure to close the door behind her.  
  
“Yup, definitely sonicking that,” the Doctor mumbled as he locked the door with his favorite tool.  
  
“But, how?” Rose stared confused at the sonic.  
  
“Had one destroyed a while back. On your moon, actually. Ever since then, I’ve carried spares in all my suits.”  
  
Rose nodded, but still looked uncertain.  
  
“I really am me, you know,” he tested, wondering if it was disconcerting to her to see this him doing something so familiar.  
  
“Oh! Yeah, I know.” She smiled a little to reassure him. “It’s just, I found… well. Anyway. Probably time I showed you this.” She dropped to her knees by the bed and dug underneath for a moment. She emerged with a shoebox. She sat on the bed and beckoned him over. He was hardly conscious of anything else but the magnetic pull of those fingers, that unreadable smile, those sad whiskey-amber eyes.  
  
“It’s silly,” she began, “but when I was really little, my cousin had this shoebox under her bed. It was for all the memories of the good times with her ex. She moved on, but she still kept the good pieces alive in there so she would remember more than how it hurt. For some mad reason, the idea just came back to me when I landed here. I didn’t have much, and I needed to use some of what I did have, but here’s the rest.”  
  
He waited for her to open the box, but first a thought occurred to him and he covered her hand with his.  
  
“Wait, you said you needed to use what you did have… You had the psychic paper. Could you use it without me or the TARDIS helping you?”  
  
“I had to.” She bit her lip, expecting a reprimand.  
  
“Rose,” he exhaled in wonder and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You’re telepathic.”  
  
“A little. Mostly empathic, though. I think, maybe, it was the Bad Wolf thing. I didn’t know about it until I started training here at Torchwood. I was good.” The corner of her lip turned up at the memory. “Too good. I told them you taught me, but it was more than that. It was like she was there, the TARDIS. Like she was helping me. But she can’t have. I think it was whatever happened to me on the Game Station. What else could it be? I’ve gone over everything else and it just makes sense. We… I dunno… became part of each other.”  
  
He blinked, too awed to form words, and kissed her deeply. He always had been the spontaneous type, after all. It followed that showing romantic affection wouldn’t be any different.  
  
“We need to talk more about this later,” he said, breathing heavily from lack of respiratory bypass. “But I believe you were about to show me a box that is symbolically and metaphorically bigger on the inside?”  
  
She giggled and pecked a light kiss on his shoulder, hiding her face from him for a minute.  
  
“You’re so different. And before you ask, definitely good-different.”  
  
If he had a tail, he would have been wagging it at that declaration, the lovesick puppy that he was.  
  
The giddy mood deflated as soon as she opened the box, however. Years of heartache screamed from its tearstained Post-its (“I wrote down every memory I could think of. I didn’t want to forget a second.”) to its relics from an era that was now over for both of them. Photos from her phone taken in places that were too obviously alien for public display, the gum they both liked best from Kappa 6b, the banana chapstick he bought her, her change in alien coins from the damn bazoolium. Next to all of these, by far the biggest item in the box, was a black leather case. She slid an impossible metal tube out of one end.  
  
“Is…? No. That can’t. Rose?”  
  
His heart pounded as he waited for her answer. If she had a version of his sonic, where had she been with that cannon of hers? What horrors had she witnessed?  
  
“You died,” she squeaked. She took in a shaking breath and tried again. “Donna wasn’t there to save you and you drowned. The Thames. You didn’t regenerate! You just…” Her face crumpled in a way horribly reminiscent of the first time on that bloody beach. Finally, her shield of positivity was cracking to match the anger and sadness he had expected. But instead of this him, it was directed toward a version of him in a pocket universe she had erased from existence.  
  
“It’s alright,” he soothed, draping an arm around her shoulder. “It didn’t happen. I’m here now.”  
  
“It did though,” she defended, pulling away and holding up the sonic. “Because this is here. I saw them carry you away. Doctor, how soon was that after…?”  
  
“Immediately. I met Donna right after the last crack in the void closed and our goodbye was cut short. I’ll tell you the whole story later, but know that I thought I had just lost you forever,” he confessed, unable to look away from the very real sonic in her hands. “You might have figured out by now that before we met, I never intended to survive Henriks.”  
  
“I wondered,” she admitted so softly it was almost a whisper. “Even that night. Then when you told me about your people…”  
  
He nodded and swallowed. “As much as the other me was a bastard yesterday, he was right. You made me better. I just didn’t want to live without that.” It sounded so simple, so selfish, so inadequate to describe the storm in his soul. As always, Rose’s reaction surprised him.  
  
“Me either.”  
  
The pit dropped out of his stomach as he realized what she meant.  
  
“I mean, not always. Just for a little while there, a few nights after you told me we could never see each other again, I sat out there on the balcony.” She tilted her head toward the French doors leading outside. “And saw the stars. I knew you weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere in this universe. And the walls were closed. I saw the three story drop and just wanted to jump so badly. I couldn’t do it, of course, not to Mum and Pete and knowing Tony was on the way. And maybe I was too scared. But I do know what it is to want that, just so you know.” She shrugged, as if that would cushion the darkness she was revealing.  
  
“What changed?” His gentle question was complemented by the way he traced his fingers along her back.  
  
“Could probably figure that one out yourself. One night as I sat out there feeling sorry for myself, I noticed some of the stars were missing. Bloody things, not where they belonged. Like me, I thought. At first I figured I was just imagining things. ‘Sides, what do I know? Maybe that’s normal here. But then Dad mentioned the scientists at Torchwood were working on it and I was reassigned from field work to the cannon.”  
  
“And by reassigned, you mean you insisted?”  
  
Rose blushed and he delighted in how well he knew her even still.  
  
“Maybe, possibly, I headed up the project?”  
  
“ _That’s_ my girl!” he praised. “That said, very dangerous. I should be cross with you for even thinking of attempting such a thing, not to mention using yourself as a missile to punch through the void. I should be terribly angry.”  
  
He was still beaming, contradicting his words. She wasn’t watching, however, so she missed it, instead caressing the sonic like the last unbroken piece of her heart.  
  
“We weren’t. The walls were open by the time we got it up,” she recited as if expecting this argument. “Just needed the modified hoppers to make it work. I know what you’re going to say. It wasn’t exactly safe, of course, but not like you’re thinking.”  
  
As fiercely protective as he felt for her, he refused to make their first real night back together the row she thought was coming.  
  
“So, here we are,” he abruptly changed the subject, and she lifted her attention to him in surprise. “Alone in your bedroom, Rose Tyler.” He waggled his eyebrows and cuddled her closer. “Why, anything could happen.”  
  
Her melancholy fell to his masterful deflection.  
  
“With an extra sonic,” she reminded him. “But if you’ve already got one, what do we do with this one?”  
  
“Well, it’s always handy to have a backup,” he mused. “Ooooor… you could have it. Finder’s keepers, after all.”  
  
“Really?” A sliver of excitement shone through her guarded exterior.  
  
“Yep. Could even fix it up especially for you, settings you’d use, make the most frequent ones easy to remember, add some updates…”  
  
She threw her arms around him and kissed him. They were getting rather good at this, if he did say so himself. She was leaning into him. In his intoxicating Rose-high he slid his hand up the back of her jeans-clad thigh and tugged, willing her to read the signal correctly and straddle him. When she didn’t, but did thread her fingers through his hair, his daring hands moved higher to previously forbidden territory. She pulled back slowly from their kiss as if willing herself inch by inch.  
  
“Doctor, stop,” she whispered, leaning her forehead against his as she caught her breath. “We can’t.”  
  
“Sorry! Oh Rose, I’m so sorry.” Horrified at himself and his new human hormones, he retreated back and tried to tamp down the building problem in his pants. “I thought… I didn’t… It’s too soon. Or maybe you don’t want-”  
  
She pecked his lips and cupped his cheek with her hand.  
  
“Oh, I do want. Just not tonight. Tony’s next door.” She winked and her smile bloomed once more. “Tomorrow night we’ll be home in our flat and then. Then I’ll show you just how much I missed you. Alright?”  
  
Her words were confident enough, but he could sense her apprehension. They were not simply crossing lines, but smashing barriers they had spent all their previous time together constructing.  
  
“ _Our_ flat,” he echoed, choosing to focus on something else besides her promise in an attempt to control his arousal.  
  
“Home for now. Curtains and carpets and doors. I know it’s not your favorite, but it won’t be long, right? Donna made it sound like it all you have to do is shutterfly the something or other and you’ll be back up there with the stars in no time.”  
  
“Only if you want to be.” He didn’t correct her terminology on the scientific process. Only on her pronoun use. That’s what was important in the moment. The gratitude on her face told him it was a good choice. Perhaps the little piece of Donna in him wouldn’t be a bad thing after all.  
  
“I’d go anywhere with you,” she admitted. “You should know that by now.”  
  
He hugged her again, because he could and because he loved her and because no words in any language could express it well enough.  
  
The mood was interrupted by two yawns, first from her, unsuccessfully hidden, then from him, a victim of their contagious nature.  
  
“Even to sleep?” he asked.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“You said you’d go with me anywhere, but I think sleeping might be the best option at the moment.”  
  
She happily took his hand and pulled him off the bed with her. Dropping it, she walked to the wardrobe and picked out two T-shirts, a tiny pair of shorts and a pair of plaid soft cotton trousers.  
  
“Mum left some of Dad’s pajamas for you in the drawer while I was showing you around.” She tossed the larger shirt and the jimjam trousers in the air for him to catch, which he did reflexively. “I’m just going to change in here and I’ll be right out.”  
  
She ducked into the en suite. The closing door woke him from his entrancement with the tiny shorts and her words about being “right out” registered. He raced to undress from his suit and into the jimjams before she emerged. He made it in plenty of time. He folded his clothes (something he rarely did under normal circumstances) and fidgeted to hide his nerves.  
  
_“It’s just sleep,”_ he chastised himself internally. _“Just a nightlong cuddle. Not as if you two haven’t done this before a thousand times.”_  
  
This was different, he had to admit to himself. This was the first night of their forever.  
  
Later, he kept this lack of urgency in mind, along with her little brother’s proximity, as they climbed beneath the sheets and she lie facing him inches away.


	2. In Your Wildest Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose has a nightmare and Tentoo has to rescue her from her own mind. Much less serious and much more kissing than it sounds. :) But some light angst as more of Rose's emotional shields fall away and they have a needed conversation.

He awoke in the dark to the feeling of strawberry scented hair on his lips. They must have moved in the night because he could feel her back pressed against chest and her bum was, well, where it shouldn’t be while trying to keep things innocent. He tried to untwine his legs from hers and slide his arm from around her middle, but she wouldn’t allow it, even in sleep. In fact, she whimpered in distress. Guess he wasn’t going anywhere. He set about concentrating on anything else distinctly less exciting than how she wiggled against him and how much he desired her. Just as he was fading back to sleep, he felt her shudder against him. The shudder grew to all out trembling and she cried out.

“Shhh.” He had been smoothing her hair away from his lips but found he couldn’t stop running his fingers through it. Luckily, it seemed to calm her. For a moment.

“No,” she mumbled, distraught in her sleep, “Doctor, no!”

She struggled in his arms.

“Rose,” he called. “Wake up, love. It’s just a dream.”

“Help. Somebody, please,” she whimpered. He shook her gently, but she was in too deep.

He internally kicked himself as he remembered. She was a young telepath who had been through hell, with little substantial mental training if he knew Torchwood. Even a trustworthy parallel version was still run by humans with poor understanding of their own minds. As an empath, she would be especially prone to these nightmares.

She was mumbling again. “Don’t be dead, god, please don’t be dead.” She was still for a second, and then sobs wracked her body. He held her closer and hesitated. When the shaking and tears didn’t stop, he whispered an apology in her ear before doing what he knew he had to do to wake her.

He eased into her mind as slowly and gently as he could. Her shields were wide open gates, beckoning him deeper into a sprawling, lush, but well-kept rose garden.

“Rose?” he called into her mind, trying to stay in the shallows for minimal invasiveness and violation of privacy.

Her soul shimmered gold in the distance from the window of a stone cottage. He was at the door in an instant, knocking lightly.

“It’s me. Can I come in?” he asked in hope.

A few flecks of peeling paint fluttered to the ground as the door opened on its own. Rose was huddled in a tense, tight ball in the corner of the dark room, glowing gold as she wept.

“Hey, hey, shh.” He rushed to her side and gathered her in his arms. “It’s ok. I’m here.”

At his touch, she finally awoke to her own consciousness, blinking in surprise as her awareness registered him.

“Doctor? Oh my god, you’re alive!” She let out a final sob, one of relief and joy, as she threw her arms around him. “It wasn’t real. None of it was real.”

“Just a nightmare, that’s all. Want to tell me about it?”

“You died. Both of you. The Daleks on the Crucible… it worked. Just like they planned. Everything was destroyed but I still saw it all. It was awful, Doctor.” She buried her head against his chest. “I can’t lose you again. I can’t. I can’t.”

“Rose, it’s alright. You’ve got me. Forever.” He pecked a kiss to her head and felt the spell over her break. She shivered and the glow around her dimmed.

“Where are we?” she asked in a much more normal voice.

“This, Rose Tyler, is your mind. Welcome to it.”

“Very funny.” She rolled her red-rimmed, puffy eyes. “No really, what is this?”

She stood up and he followed, steadying her when she swayed a bit. They walked out of the small cottage and she took in the flowers.

“You’re not lying. This isn’t real life, is it? It’s all in my head.”

“Of course it is happening inside your head, but why should that mean that it is not real?” He quoted, pleased at the perfect opportunity.

“Ok, it’s really you then, if you’re spouting off Harry Potter. But how?”

“Wellllll, I may have come to the party without being invited, per se…” He cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I would never, you know, but I couldn’t wake you any other way and you mentioned being an empath and if that rubbish telepathy training had been worth anything you wouldn’t have to have these nightmares and did you know your barriers were flung open? Literal gates! We’ll definitely have to work on that. And-”

“Doctor.” She silenced him with a finger on his lips. “I forgive you. It was the only way, yeah?”

He nodded against her finger.

“Then, thank you. That was…” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Terrifying. If you can make these stop, I’m up for anything. Whatever it takes.”

“These? Does this happen often, then?” His heart broke for her as she nodded and stared at the dirt path.

“I thought, with you here, maybe,” she trailed off. “But I was wrong. Sorry. I didn’t want you to have to see that, or have to do something like this.”

Here he had just violated her sleeping mind and she was the one apologizing.

“Oh, no. No, don’t… I’m so sorry you had to go through any of this. That you’ve had even one. I should have taught you how to prevent them. I never thought Bad Wolf would… I just changed that Christmas and you were still with me and I was so grateful. I never stopped to consider it would have changed you as well. My stupid thick head. Did you get these nightmares on the TARDIS as well?”

“No, she blocked them, I think. Protected me. It was only here, alone, and not every night. Just after a difficult jump or something bad.”

“Tomorrow then, when we get to the flat. I’ll show you how to stop them.”

A wicked grin grew on her lips.

“Don’t forget, we already have plans for tomorrow night.”

Let it never be said he was the only master of deflection-by-flirting when things got too serious. She winked and licked her lips in a comically naughty way that simultaneously made him laugh and a bit aroused. It didn’t help that her physical body was technically still pressed against him, even if it was merely a ghost of an awareness while in her mind like this. That thought in itself was erotic. No, no, no, wrong way! He had to stop himself or he was going to go crazy.

“Maybe tomorrow’s activities can complement each other,” he heard himself say.

“Really?” came her intrigued reply.

“Mhmm,” he managed.

“So how do we get back, anyway?”

“Where’s that?” he asked stupidly, attention now directed at pink, perfect lips he had yet to telepathically kiss.

“Um, to our bodies?” she laughed. “Or whatever you want to call it. Out of my head?”

“Ah. Yes. Just let me. Hold on, this won’t hurt a bit.”

He pulled himself out of her mind like taffy, reluctant to go and cautious not to hurt her. Back in their bed, in the physical world, they woke, stretching and yawning. They had only gotten a few hours sleep before her nightmare and, combined with the strain of telepathy, were far from fully rested.

“You know,” she mumbled groggily, “Most of the time when doctors say that, they don’t mean it, but you were really good. Really, really good.”

He chuckled at the innuendo of her post-telepathy-in-sleep drunkenness.

“Not cross with me then?”

“Hell no.” She rolled over in his arms and pecked a kiss to his lips. “Thank you.”

“Anytime. Well, hopefully not for that, but if you were awake to, uh, give your consent and wanted to, we could. Just in case you were wondering, or, I don’t know, thought it would be fun, maybe tomorrow night, as I mentioned, along with our other… ahem… plans. If not, no problem-o, we don’t-”

“I’d like that,” she interrupted. “At least, it sounds nice. Never had telepathic sex before, but if it feels as lovely as that, I wouldn’t mind trying.”

“Oh, it’s much better! You’re going to love it!” His grin was so big his cheeks started to hurt. He sobered a bit and added, “That is, I’d very much like to introduce you to the friendly, non-terrifying side of your empathic and telepathic giftings tomorrow, including but not limited to making love to you in every possible way. Mentally.” He placed a kiss on her forehead. “Emotionally.” He kissed her cheek. “And physically.” He kissed her lips and she deepened it. Tongue met tongue and he cursed himself for ever letting himself kiss her in bed if things were not going any further for what? Another 18 hours? These human hormones were ridiculous.

He was saved from having to cut them off and calm down his body by sheer willpower alone when a muffled musical noise came from next door. It was a song about a dinosaur and a cowboy and the singer sounded about 3 years old. Or, rather, 2 years and 9 months as he had proudly proclaimed at dinner.

That sound right there, _that_ was an effective mood killer for what he very much wanted to do to the singer’s sister right now in bed.

“That’ll be Tony,” Rose grumbled in unnecessary explanation, rolling mercifully away from his hips and onto her back. “He’s not sleeping through the night lately. Mum said so, but I forgot. Wasn’t really listening, to be honest.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” he prodded, sensing she had more to say but was holding back.

“Thought I’d be gone and it’d hurt less not to be too attached. He wouldn’t remember me anyway.”

He pushed up on his elbow to see her better and caught the regret in her admission. Too much like himself, indeed.

“Rose, I…”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. It’s not your fault. None of what I’ve been through here is. It’s over now. You’re here.”

“I’m here,” he agreed. “I was just going to say I know what that’s like. Pushing someone you love away because you care so much it hurts. Being attached. Knowing you’re that much closer to losing them each day.”

She didn’t miss his meaning, he could tell from the emotions playing out over her features, but instead of responding to that, she looked away and sighed.

“Suppose I should get him to go back to sleep.”

“Maybe I could come with you? He wanted me to tell him a bedtime story, but we got caught up talking to Pete.”

“Yeah, that’d be good.” She was blinking rapidly, fighting the emotions magnified by exhaustion. She moved as if to stand, but something was still weighing her down inside.

“Hey, what is it?” He caught her wrist and swung his legs over to join her on the side of the bed, mirroring their position from earlier in the evening.

She shook her head, messy tangled waves falling forward to hide her expression. He noticed the singing from next door had stopped and he decided he had time to press the issue.

“I know you, remember? What’s wrong?” He prodded. “Won’t tell anyone, pinkie swear and cross my heart.”

The corner of her lip that he could see turned up despite her inner turmoil.

“Rose.”

The way he said her name broke her resistance to his concern. She turned to him with a stone mask that demanded honesty. No wonder she was such a good agent, he noted for the hundredth time since their reunion. She was so much more than the Rose he had known years ago. Or maybe he just hadn’t seen her for all she had been. This revelation distracted him, and he didn’t follow her question at first.

“That part of our story is over, right?”

“What part?”

“The part…” She took in a shaky breath. “The part where you push me away.”

The unexpected words sliced through him, though he knew he deserved worse than their blade. But she wasn’t done. She squeezed her eyes shut as she continued and dug her fingers into the duvet.

“Because we have the same lifespan now. Or closer to it. Who knows, could die from anything, right? But you won’t do that to me again, this you. You’re not like that anymore. No more ‘curse of the Time Lords.’ You’re not him, not like that.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and she relaxed a little into his touch.

“True, I’m not like that anymore. But it isn’t because I’m part-human.”

She leaned back to read his sincere expression as he continued.

“It’s because I lost you. You’re not the only one changed by all this, you know. Even if that Dalek hadn’t been in that street... I couldn’t resist you again. I’d already lost you once. If there was any chance of getting you back, I swore I’d never let you go if you still wanted me.”

“’Course I still want you, daft alien.” She nestled into his embrace. “I love you.”

She said it so casually, but stiffened after it came out. They both stilled and he swore she could hear his heart pounding in the now-silent night.

“Oh my god, I hadn’t said it back,” she whispered. “That was the first time.”

“Well, not the _first_ time,” he said, and immediately regretted it. What had he been thinking, bringing up _that_ day now?

“The first time where I could do this.” She tilted her head up to seal her declaration with a kiss, but before he could suck her delightfully tempting bottom lip between his like he very much wanted to, the singing from next door resumed with fervor.

They broke away laughing a little.

“C’mon.” He stood and took her hand. “Let’s get that boy his bedtime story before breakfast.”

“Ugh, we are so sleeping in this morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My interpretation of telepathy is... loose. And varies by fic. lol So if this is not your headcanon of how telepathy works, know that it won't ruin the next chapter for you and you might still enjoy my other stories because no two are exactly the same. haha


	3. Never Grow Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeing Rose and Tony together gets the Doctor thinking about their future... with some help from Jackie's loving, but unbridled mother-in-law-ish tongue. ;)

“Hey there, little man,” she softly called as she opened the door to Tony’s room.

“Hi, Wose! I’m singing.”

“I heard. Singing time is tomorrow, though. Now it’s sleeping time.”

“I can’t sleep. I’m not sleepy! Wose, do dinosauhs sleep?”

“I know someone who can answer that question from personal experience.”

Tony gasped in anticipation.

“Hallo, there.” The Doctor poked his head into the nightlight-lit room. “Mind if I tell you that story now?”

“Doctah!!!” Tony was now up bouncing on the bed and Rose was clearly regretting this decision.

“Shhh, Tony.” Rose tried to grab him but he was too quick.

The Doctor easily plucked the bouncing blond from his hopping and spun him around in a circle before plopping him back on the bed. Tony giggled with abandon, the Doctor was delighted to note, exactly like his sister.

“C’mere, now.” Rose leaned back on the pillow of the small bed and gathered her wiggling but subdued brother into a cuddle. The Doctor pulled up the chair conveniently placed near the bed for this exact purpose.

“Alrighty now, what would you like to hear? How about…”

“The werewolf! Wooo wooo woooooo!” Tony howled. Rose tried to shush him and the Doctor raised his standards of what a Tyler kid could handle.

“ _Our_ werewolf?” the Doctor asked in surprise.

“Or the absobawoff. Or the space piwates! Ooo or the ugwy Sweveen.” Tony dissolved in giggles.

“Blimey, he knows all our stories.” The Doctor barely suppressed a smirk as Tony pulled out a paper TARDIS from the other side of the bed and held it up proudly. “You really did miss me, didn’t you?”  

Rose rolled her eyes at his smugness.

“You should have seen the superheroes here. Completely ridiculous. He liked our stories much better. And there are quite a few that will keep until he’s older.” Her pointed look told him even the stories the kid knew were well watered down.

“Of course.” He picked up the paper TARDIS and examined it. “But there are stories I haven’t even told you yet. Being 900 years young, I’ve got my share of bedtime stories.”

The promise of something new captured the attention of both Tyler siblings. Tony snuggled in closer to Rose on the bed as the Doctor began.

He woke to early morning sunlight streaming in through the window and Jackie’s hand shaking his shoulder. She held up a finger to her lips before pointing it to the bed. The Doctor smiled in contentment, seeing Rose so peacefully curled up with the little boy who resembled her so much.

“I want you to remember what that looks like, Doctor,” Jackie whispered. “I don’t know what your intentions are toward my Rose, but I know you love her and she loves you and if you’ve half a brain left, you can see things are different now. She has a family here. One you’re welcome in, whether you want it or not.”

“I do,” he whispered back, cutting off her mother-in-law rant. He memorized every inch of the scene in front of him. “I want to give her everything, Jackie. And for the first time, I can.”

“Well. As long as that includes grandchildren for me, I’m not complaining.” Her teasing smile met his sleepy but appreciative one.

“Mum?” Rose woke and rubbed her eyes with her free hand, the one not currently entrapped around an almost-3-year-old.

“Go back to your own bed, love,” her mother encouraged. “Just came in to check on Tony.”

“He was up at 3:30 again. Singing this time.” Rose successfully unwrapped herself from his arms and legs and the three adults crept toward the hallway. “The Doctor told him a story and must have put us all to sleep. You know how he rambles.” She bumped his shoulder playfully.

“Oi, wasn’t boring. I just have a soothing voice,” the Doctor defended.

“Mmm yeah, you do,” Rose agreed with a yawn and a stretch. “Could also be that we’ve hardly gotten a few hours sleep at a time in the last couple of days, not to mention you’ve got a new body and I’ve been working on that bloody cannon for months.”

“Hardly slept at all for a year, that one!” Jackie interjected. “You two get back in there and rest up. No funny business.”

Jackie Tyler once again left the Doctor staring at the inside of Rose’s bedroom door in disbelief at her innuendo.

“Welcome back to life with Mum,” Rose quipped.

“Nah, she’s alright.” He rubbed at his scruffy chin. “She had a point earlier.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Just something she said I hadn’t had a chance to really think about yet.”

“Spill.”

“Rose, we seriously need to sleep.”

“So I’ve heard. Hasn’t stopped us all night.”

The Doctor sighed and climbed back into bed. If they were going to do this, he wanted it to be lying beside each other like a proper couple.

“Seeing you and Tony sleeping like that,” he began as she climbed in next to him. “It got me thinking. Someday you might want your own-”

“Doctor. You know that’s not-”

“Biologically, we can. Now that I’m this me. I’d have to do a few medical tests to be sure, of course, but if I’m right… It’s not out of the question.”

She searched his face.

“But what do you _want_?” she asked.

“Anything. Everything. As long as it includes you,” he admitted freely. “We can do it all! Live in a flat. Do domestic. Save the world. Of course, for now that probably requires working for Torchwood as that’s where the alien tech is. I do remember how you like alien tech, Rose. Anyway, save the world. Fly away in the TARDIS when she’s ready. Have a family. If you want.”

“You said you’d been a dad before, yeah?”

He swallowed before responding, the unexpected question catching him off guard.

“A very, very long time ago.”

“I remember you mentioned it once, but I could always tell. You were so good in there with Tony. With all the kids we met. I, on the other hand, I’m complete rubbish. I don’t know anything about kids,” she admitted with a dash of guilt in her tone.

“Sure you do. I see how much he looks up to you. For now, I’m still some character in a story his sister made up, but you, when he sees you, that’s what it looks like to love your hero.”

“You think so?”

“Yep. And I know something else too. I think you’d be a really great mum someday.”

“Really? Because I think you’d make a really great dad someday.” She ran her fingers through his messy bedhead hair and he hummed in appreciation.

“Well, someday we’ll have to try it out. Can’t waste talent like ours,” he joked before turning serious. “I know it will be a while, but I want you to know I’m in. All in. Whenever we’re ready, Rose. There’s no pressure. We can wait as long as you want. But kids or no kids, I’m yours. Forever.”

“Forever,” she echoed. “Come what may.”

They caught a few more hours of sleep before the new day. This time when they woke, they were ready to face the new journey in front of them and all of its obstacles, many of which would test Rose’s challenge to the universe. But it would never change their promise. This time when they said “forever,” they had their whole lives to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written the sequel yet, but I hope to soon! It will definitely be rated Mature, however, when it does come about. ;D


End file.
